


In Another Form

by subjunctive



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Ragnarok, Reincarnation, Sif/Thor (background) - Freeform, a bit of darkness, a bit of hope, a bit of metafiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-19
Updated: 2015-01-19
Packaged: 2018-03-08 05:14:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3196658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subjunctive/pseuds/subjunctive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unlike most people, who just stayed dead – some in fields of pleasure and others punishment – Jane's name was down for getting reborn every time. She didn't know what she'd done to deserve that dubious honor, alongside the oh-so-great names of Thor and Sif and Loki, but she did like the variety of her lives, when she remembered them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Another Form

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BreviaryRose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BreviaryRose/gifts).



> This was written for the #LokaneDeckTheHalls exchange on Tumblr, for breviary-rose, who requested a canonverse Loki with a touch of dark in him. I hope this fits the bill!

"Jane Foster."

His voice came from behind her, but she wasn't surprised. She craned her neck to look back at him.

He was covered in blood, but it didn't appear to be his own. What a shame.

"Loki." It was more of a statement than a greeting. She turned back around on the bench. In this direction, there weren't so many dead bodies to look at, and there were still parts of Central Park that weren't drenched in gore. She didn't look at him as he sat down on the other end. Earlier she was listening – or trying not to listen to – the sounds of battle all around her, but they had begun fading a while ago. She found herself almost wishing for the screaming to come back.

Next to her, Loki threw himself down on the bench and lounged, as if he didn't have a care in the world. As if it wasn't him who brought the final battle to Midgard and initiated all this bloodshed. Smoke rose from his leg where he had been burned. The horns perched on top of his head looked ridiculous.

"Jane Foster," he ruminated. "Here we are, at the end of all things together."

She bit her lip. "Thor?"

He frowned and looked down. "Dead, I'm afraid." There was what sounded like a note of real regret in his voice, but she knew better than to trust Loki of all people.

"Don't pretend to be _sorry_ ," she snapped at him, overcome with anger and, yes, a little bit of guilt. It had been Thor who had saved her, who had protected her. He'd wanted her to be safe while he and his pregnant wife went off to do glorious battle. Well, he succeeded; he got her all the way here, all the way to the bitter end, with the taste of blood and ashes in her mouth. "This is all your fault."

"I suppose I thought it would turn out differently," he said carelessly. "My fatal flaw, I suppose. But here we are again. It's just you and me now, I think." He'd brought out one of his little knives and was toying with it. The same way he was toying with her, she suspected.

Something he was saying didn't sound right, but then, nothing about this seemed right. She looked up. It was a cloudy night, so there weren't any stars for her to see. It made her ache, all the way down to her bones, but when she spoke her voice was steady and clear. "You're evil."

Loki leaned over and, in a strangely intimate gesture, cupped her chin in his hand. His thumb caught on her lip. His voice was as quiet as hers, though it filled up what little space seemed to be left between them. "I know, Jane."

"Just kill me. Get it over with already." Her attempt at a sneer was interrupted by the hitch in her breath. _Weak_ , she imagined him saying. _Pathetic._

His pale eyes searched her face, as though he were looking for something. "Very well, then," he whispered, and faster than she could see, he flipped the knife over and drove it up and under the breastplate Thor had given her.

The knife lodged in her side, maybe her lung. Pain like fire flared down her side, burned like nothing she'd ever felt before. She gasped, though it was almost more of a gurgle. While he let go of the knife, he didn't let go of her, instead bracing her with his hand so she stayed upright. He was too focused on her face to notice her arm coming up from her side.

With her last burst of strength, she stabbed him in the throat with a dagger.

His eyes widened, and the red rim around them made the blue stand out starkly. Jane didn't bother to fight back what would surely be her last smile. She was never completely defenseless.

In death, their bodies slumped together.

* * *

The thing about reincarnation was, there was always a waiting period. Hel was the land of the dead, one that had grown familiar to Jane after thousands, even millions, of cycles. But she never stayed there for long. Unlike most people, who just stayed dead – some in fields of pleasure and others punishment – Jane's name was down for getting reborn every time. She didn't know what she'd done to deserve that dubious honor, alongside the oh-so-great names of Thor and Sif and Loki, but she did like the variety of her lives, when she remembered them.

She washed up on the shore of the river just in time to see Sif and Thor standing on the bank in full armor. They both looked serious.

"We were waiting for you," Sif said grimly. Her words weren't directed at Jane, but at Loki; they'd arrived at very nearly the same time.

Neither he nor Jane was wet from the water of the river, as usual. "Oh?" he said politely, standing up and adjusting his vambraces. As if he needed it. Like Jane, he was wearing the clothes he had died in. Not that it mattered; they'd be going back in soon again anyway.

 _Again._ There was something about that word, though she couldn't think what could be significant about it.

"Oh yes," said Sif, distracting her. While Jane was getting to her feet, she saw the light in Sif's eyes, but didn't say anything to warn him. Neither did Thor.

Sif punched Loki square in the nose, which was often Sif's reaction whenever they died at Ragnarok together, as she and Loki were always, without fail, on opposite sides.

That was the other thing about reincarnation; you always remembered everything in between.

It was a strong enough punch that Loki stumbled and fell to one knee in his surprise. Three sets of eyes glared down at him. Thor wrapped a protective arm around Sif, though Jane privately thought she didn't look like she needed protecting.

"You absolute fuck," Sif snarled, and then stalked away. Thor followed, of course, shooting Jane an apologetic look over his shoulder but leaving them alone with each other.

Her hands on her hips, she looked down at him appraisingly. "You deserved that," she said, not without sympathy, and held out her hand.

He ignored it, rising and brushing himself off unnecessarily. Hel was enormous, and the river rarely used; they were the only people around as far as the eye could see.

"Wonder what's crawled up between her legs," he said in his snottiest voice, muffled by his hand.

"Probably the fact that you murdered her while she was pregnant. Again," said Jane. Loki rolled his eyes, though to his credit he did look a little uneasy.

"She shouldn't have come, then. Killing on the battlefield is not murder, it's glorious victory," he sniped, sounding petulant, and together they began to walk up the bank. You could never outrun the river, but you could have some time to yourself before it pulled you back in. Jane and Loki always took it.

"When you started the war to end the universe, it really is," Jane said flatly. "Also again."

"I don't always start the war," he protested.

"Thor started it twice. Twice! In how many thousands of possible universes?"

Loki held up a finger. "One villainous Thor is a freak accident, I concede that. Twice is a pattern, a repeatable occurrence."

Jane scoffed. "Yeah, if you could remember and make it happen again on purpose. Which you can't. As soon as we step back into that river, it'll all be gone." Hel had its own legends, of course, of flowers that grew on the banks that people said could do things to your memory, make you remember your past lives when you got reborn, but it was just wishful thinking. In all her countless visits, Jane had never spotted a single flower. Beautiful things just didn't grow in the land of the dead.

He lifted a shoulder in nonchalance. "I'm very fond of those timelines. Well, one of them."

"Which one?" asked Jane, even though she already knew the answer. The grasses brushed her thighs as they walked.

"Not the one where I married you, of course, if that's what you think." He was looking at her out of the corner of his eye, smiling slyly.

"Of course." Jane felt her irritation beginning to fade, but she wasn't going to let this go. "Why do you act like it doesn't matter?"

"Because it doesn't," said Loki, pulling ahead of her just so he could look back over his shoulder. "How many times have we gone through this? It is all erased in the end."

"It's _not_ erased," Jane insisted, sucked into the argument despite having had it a countless number of times. "We remember it, don't we?"

He gave a shrug. "As if a dream, and now we have woken."

It did matter. It _did_. But no matter how many lifetimes she'd been through, she never could find the words to convince him. "It still happened," she said stubbornly. "You still chose to do all those things. It was still real."

He turned around stopped walking so quickly she almost ran into him; he reached out to steady her. "Come now. Is this really how you wish to spend our remaining time together? What do you say, would you like to make the most of the time we have left?" As she rolled her eyes, he added, "You _know_ I'm always better in universes where I bed someone beforehand. As one of the heroes of this story, it is practically your duty."

"We do _not_ ," said Jane severely as she discarded her heavy breastplate onto the bank, "have a statistically relevant sample size to determine that."

Loki was chucking his shirt, helmet long gone. She took a moment to admire his chest before turning back to the river. "Consider this a data point," she heard from behind her.

They were alone. Why not? It had been a few lifetimes, but being with Loki was like riding a bicycle ( _ha,_ good one, Jane, she could hear Darcy saying in her head). Mostly Jane ended up with Thor, or Don, or Richard, or sometimes with no one, depending on the course of her life, but no matter what Loki was a constant presence. Usually an irritating presence, but a constant one nonetheless. For better or for worse – this was one instance where she didn't want to run the numbers, not that that information was really quantifiable anyway – their destinies, if she believed in such a thing, seemed intertwined.

Loki wrapped his arms around her from behind and nipped at her earlobe. "I miss the days when it was improper for women to wear pants," he mused, unbuttoning her jeans with a flick. "Access was so . . . convenient. I hope we get one of those again soon."

Jane rolled her eyes even as his hands wandered lower.

"Remember that time in Italy?" he murmured.

"How could I, when you never let me forget it?" she said, turning around in his arms so that his smile was pressed against her cheek.

He responded by kissing her neck, his hands sliding down the back of her jeans to squeeze. "It was only a few days before your wedding, and into my study you waltz – looking quite fetching, I might add –" He grinned at Jane's snort. "So shy and virginal, untouched by gentle Thor, who for once in his life had tried to do right by a woman, leaving you ignorant of the ways of men. And beds. And being with men _in_ beds. Not that there was a bed _per se_ involved when we . . ."

His hands came up to pull off her shirt, but she had already beat him to it and laughed as she flung it away.

"I'm sorry," he said, eyes wandering over her breasts. Her nipples were getting stiff from the attention alone. "Where was I?"

"Italy," she reminded him.

Grinning, he shook his head as if to clear it. He fell to his knees, peeling down her jeans and pressing his mouth to her hipbone where it jutted out. "Right. Italy, right. You wanted an education, if I remember correctly."

"I wanted to know what to expect," corrected Jane, letting her hand tangle in his hair and lifting one foot so he could pull the leg off. She set the ball of her foot on his thigh and kneaded her toes into him. "I thought you could help. You had a reputation."

"I certainly gave you a very . . . thorough idea." His fingers hooked into the waistband of her underwear.

Jane found herself slightly breathless as she watched him drag them down, his eyes fixed on her. "Well, you know, what is book-learning without hands-on demonstra _aah!_ " He had leaned forward and _nipped_ her at the juncture of her thighs. With his teeth! She yanked on his hair in reprimand.

"Sorry," he murmured, not looking sorry at all. "I suppose it's been awhile."

"No desk to bend me over this time," said Jane with fake regret, although her pulse did quicken at the memory of him lifting up her skirts, her quaking hands pressed to the dark wood, her fear and arousal.

Loki closed his eyes for a moment, as though he were savoring the memory too, and let out a deep breath that gave her exposed skin goosebumps. "What a wonderful universe. You had this beautiful blush about you the whole night. I strove with all my effort to keep it there. The things I persuaded you to do . . ." He shook his head with an expression that was both scandalized and delighted.

Sitting down in front of him in the grass, Jane pulled her jeans off the rest of the way and let him skim her underwear down her legs. Before he could push her back, she leaned forward to whisper in his ear, winding her arms around his neck. "Do you want to know a secret?"

She swore she could feel him shiver in response to her words. "Do I."

Jane kissed the corner of his jaw. "I was determined to get you to fuck me, one way or another. You didn't have to persuade me at all. I would have done anything with you that night."

She pulled back, and just in time to see his eyes wide before his expression shuttered. In every lifetime, whether she knew it or not, she had lived for that look of surprise. Fondly she ran a hand through his hair, and then down his chest, stopping only when she reached his pants.

"Well, there goes one fantasy," he said, feigning disappointment, but he couldn't quite keep all the pleasure out of his voice.

She smirked, toying with the laces on his breeches. "I think you got a second one to make up for it."

His eyes narrowed at her for a moment, and he seemed to pause before going on, as if considering what he was going to say. "And, if I'm not mistaken, a son by you from that night."

"I think so, too," she whispered, shivering as he ran his hands over her shoulders and down her arms. They had never talked about it before, not then and not after. In that universe he had never married, never had any other children that she had known of. In fact, he rarely did either in any universe. "I never told Thor, you know."

He cleared his throat. "Speaking of fantasies, there's always that universe where you and Sif worked off your aggression over Thor in, ahem, fascinating and very _athletic_ ways, while I watched from my throne in disguise – that one was quite nice." He broke off with an _mmmph._

She had taken his face in her hands and proceeded to kiss him, wet and messy. Her hand slipped lower, cupping him and squeezing. "Remember Oregon?" she said huskily, and he groaned with feeling.

"Why must you remind me of Oregon?" he moaned. "That wretched timeline. Curse the whole thing to oblivion. Forget about it already."

"Hey, now." Jane nuzzled his temple. "Don't insult one of my favorite memories." He shook his head in disbelief, so she kept going. "I still remember how wide your eyes got when I straddled you in the back of the pickup."

"I suppose you remember what followed, as well, and are determined to remind me of it," he muttered.

Jane grinned and slid a finger underneath the waistband of his breeches. "You mean the way you came in your pants? Of course I do. It was sweet," she added, tugging as she lay back so that he would follow. "I loved it. It made me feel so good."

Bracing himself on his hands over her, he gave her a skeptical look. Its force was marred somewhat by grass getting caught in his hair. "I was seventeen and thoroughly inexperienced. There's no need to pretend it was anything other than awful."

"It's true!" she protested. Loki ducked down to kiss her, presumably to get her to shut up. She didn't mind, not really. Despite what the conversation would sound like to anyone else, there were precious few universes where they had ever been involved, much less with anything approaching happiness. That was probably in part due to Thor and Sif being so tangled in their lives too, in thousands of different dramatic ways – but not entirely.

Things were different in life than in death, though. She had married Thor on many occasions – even become Queen of Asgard in some of those worlds, god help Asgard – and Sif and Loki had had any number of trysts, affairs, and even grand romances over the ages. But in death, over time, she and Loki were naturally drawn to each other. So often they seemed to end up in the same place at the end. Something niggled at her, in the back of her mind, but she couldn't quite catch the thought.

Like cleaved to like, or at least that was her hypothesis. It was hard to make objective assessments when she was pushing his pants down and wrapping her legs around him.

When they had finished, Loki rolled off of her with a sigh, flinging his arms up over his head. They were both quiet for a few minutes, listening to the sound of their breathing.

"There's something," she said suddenly, and then stopped.

"Mmm?" He sounded bored.

It was hard to concentrate. She almost didn't, almost let it go. But Jane didn't let things go, on principle. "Something you said before we came back."

"Oh? What's that?" His tone was a study in boredom. He flicked away a nearby stem.

"Again? 'Here we are again.'" The memory was recent enough that she was able to quote the exact words. "'At the end of all things together' . . . _Again_." It was that one word that Jane was stuck on, that had been niggling at the back of her mind.

His eyes were almost all the way closed; he peered out at her from little slits. He hadn't moved – in fact he was perfectly still, all the slack in his body taken up in holding himself tight – but that struck Jane as more suspicious than not.

"It was like you . . ." She trailed off, the words almost a question as she puzzled it out. It was hard to think about with the river roaring behind her, getting closer. But it was too important for her to lose focus. "But that's impossible. Isn't it?"

Grass twisted between his fingers, but his gaze hadn't moved from her. "Oh, Jane," he said finally, and he half-smiled. Oddly, it looked both bitter and admiring, though Jane didn't know what to make of that.

"It was like you knew," she accused, made bold by his reaction. Certainty fell into her gut and rippled through her like a stone in still water. "Your past lives. You _remembered_."

"I slipped," he admitted frankly. He disentangled his hand from the weeds and pushed himself up so that he was sitting. "I told you that my fatal flaw was believing that things would turn out differently. I suppose it's really something else. How cliché." He gave a laugh, and it was not the one he apparently wanted it to be, uncaring and indifferent, but something else, something short and harsh.

"But . . ." Jane pushed herself away, onto her side. "How could you -?"

He reached up to touch her cheek. "I suppose I wanted you to know. Couldn't help it. It's in my nature."

She jerked away, staring at him. "What are you talking about? How could you – if you knew –" He had _killed her_ , not thirty minutes ago, and he'd known the whole time?

His hand fell, and his expression shifted to something that was almost a pout. "It is not as though the universe is subject to my every whim. Circumstances conspire, as you well know. Some things can't be helped."

"No, I don't know," she whispered, looking at him in horror.

This was apparently not the reaction he was looking for. He ran a hand through his hair, looking frustrated. "What have I been telling you all along, Jane? _It doesn't matter._ It is chaff, blown away by the wind. I am searching for the wheat."

"It _does_ matter. You stuck a knife in me!"

Loki's expression was dangerous. "And you in me, _if_ you recall."

Of course he wouldn't understand why it was different. "Searching for . . ." Her eyes roved his face, its lines both familiar and unfamiliar. "What are you talking about?"

"One of these cycles, I am going to stumble upon a chance life, one where the roles were not written as usual." He sounded casual, but his eyes never left her face, fixed on her with an unnerving intensity. "You _know_ the odds are against me. You know how my story is written. You know the scale of the universe is tipped in his favor."

Jane didn't have to ask who "he" was. "What are you talking about?" she demanded. "It's your choice! You could choose to be different, but you –" She stared at him. She was stupid, stupid, stupid. There was a rushing sound in her ears; she didn't know if it was her blood or the river. "You haven't changed at all."

"I could!" He sounded desperate for her to believe him, dropping the façade of coolness and leaning toward her. "Given the right circumstances. You _know_ I could, you've seen it. And then I could fix it that way forever, tip the scales back in the other direction. Wouldn't that be fair? After all this time with the whole world in his favor – wouldn't it?"

"You can't be serious. You can't do that!"

He swept up her hands in his own, seeming to take her denial as a practical one. "I can! Hela is in agreement with me. The entirety of the cosmos is written unjustly. We have a plan. We will –" Loki broke off as he watched her. Her outrage and disgust must have been clear, because his face twisted. "Of course," he muttered. His hands squeezed hers a little too hard. "Of course you're against me. You're always against me."

"I'm not against you," she said reflexively, angrily. He could _not_ make this out to be her problem. "I'm against what you're doing! How are you even going to do it?" A thought occurred to her. "I won't let you. _I'll_ remember, at least when we're dead again."

The look he gave her then was gentle, and it chilled her down to her bones. "Oh, Jane. You're a very intelligent woman. Do you think this is the first time you've figured it out?"

Her mouth opened and closed. For once she was totally without words. Forgetting she was naked, she tried to stand up, the only goal in her mind to get as far away from him as she could.

But one of his hands shot out to grab her by the elbow and she stumbled forward. Pulling her down, he pinned her to the grass beneath him, straddling her. "You have no idea what I went through to get this," he hissed, hand scrabbling in his pocket to pull something out.

Two somethings – pouches. One was purple and the other green. Ignoring her struggles, he untied the green one first. "There are two flowers, did you know?" he said, between pants. He had supervillain monologuing down to an art form. "The pollen does such interesting things to one's memories." He dipped a finger inside; it came out dotted with yellow. This he licked off. 

Jane stared at him. There was still some pollen on his lower lip. The river sounded much louder now; they were almost out of time.

"One for me, for remembrance," he began, and she could guess what the other one did. As he reached for the other pouch, she knocked his hand away and, before he could react, grabbed his face and darted up to kiss him, running her tongue over his lip.

He made a muffled, surprised noise. There was a floral taste in her mouth.

The water was very close; it had inched up the bank while they weren't paying attention. Jane put the whole force of her body behind turning them both over in one surge. He still hadn't recovered from his surprise enough to respond in time, and she heard more than saw him splash into the dark water underneath her.

Soon it had dragged them both under, the inexorable pull toward life. Her last hope before the water rose over her head was that things might be different this time.


End file.
